


i carry anger, i carry sadness

by sapphire2309



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 05:35:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12292389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire2309/pseuds/sapphire2309
Summary: Before Johanna was in the Capitol's crosshairs, there was someone she cared about.





	1. the monument of a memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slightlykylie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlykylie/gifts).



_Despair._

That's all that life can be, when you're playing the Hunger Games. Setbacks and disasters following each other like bread and butter should, moments of solace stolen away by more challenges to struggle through. Johanna knows despair very well. She has survived a Hunger Games. She is in the middle of another. She was a Victor. She doesn't know what she is anymore. 

_Memory is a strange thing._

She used to love the feeling of water dripping through her hair, because it meant rain and trees and _Inès_. Now, it means electricity. 

It hurts to remember. But then again, it hurts to breathe.

She breathes. She remembers. 

It's all she can do, anyhow. 

-:-

She'd known Inès half her life, before she fell in love. Hard not to: they went to the same school, worked for the same mill, lived a few doors down from each other. 

They knew each other by reputation, at first. Johanna was known for her quick temper and strong right hook. She was small and wiry and would have been viciously bullied if her bite wasn't as well known as her bark. Inès was known for her quick fingers, taking home discarded chunks of wood from the mill, carving them into delicate little birds and squirrels and leaves.

Johanna thinks she fell in love with the way Inès wielded a chisel before she fell in love with her.


	2. i can never let go

Peeta's screaming again.

Not that she blames him. They're both trapped in their minds here, and she's seen the vials of tracker jack venom they empty into his veins. At least she gets to stay sane. Relatively speaking.

She wants to be angry, but all she feels is relief that today, her tormentors have chosen to leave her alone.

She rests her hand at the edge of her cell, as close to the force field as she dares, pretends that it makes a difference to him that she's reaching out. 

The callouses from wielding her axe are gone, she notes as her hand touches the floor.

-:-

Inès had an artist's fascination for the texture of her hand, from the moment Johanna allowed her to touch it. Johanna remembers the hesitance in that touch, the fine trembling of Inès's fingers as she slid her hand into Johanna's, the way her lips parted as her fingers touched a callous, the way she fit their hands together in a way Johanna was loath to call holding, because it was just contact, skin on skin. Neither of them put any strength into that grip, they just... folded around each other, they just _were_.

Johanna spent hours with her hand on Inès's worktable, letting her examine the rough skin as much as she wanted, trembling as her hair brushed Johanna's outstretched palm as she turned to and from the carefully chosen piece of driftwood she was reshaping into a replica of Johanna's hand.

Inès spent hours seated in a hollow at the base of a tree, watching as Johanna practiced her aim, watching as Johanna worked up the courage to kiss her for the first time, watching as Johanna reduced logs to splinters in a fit of rage.

Johanna would ask for permission to kiss her. 

Inès would ask for permission to hold her hand.

-:-

Rain used to mean stolen kisses in the thick of the forest, leaves giving way ever so often and drenching them with ice cold water. 

_You can always trust the Capitol to ruin anything you hold dear_ , Johanna thinks as she screams.


	3. history we regret

The arena chooses who lives and who dies. Or, well the Gamemakers do.

Johanna knows this, because she has been in it, and she survived only because she was underestimated until it was too late. She knows this because her sister was in it the year after she was. She knows this because the moment her sister was reaped, Johanna knew that she would soon be in the market for a coffin.

Inès never believed this. 

Odds are, she never will.

-:-

However they ended, the 71st Hunger Games would have torn Inès apart. Her brother _and_ her girlfriend in the arena at the same time? Who was she supposed to pray for? How was she supposed to live with it if neither came back? If one came back, and became a living monument of the one who didn't?

"I wish you had died," Inès said, when Johanna came back after winning the Games. Johanna believed her and walked away and never looked back.

Somehow, that still hurts more than anything the Capitol's ever done.

-:-

She fights her rescuers. She screams and flails and doesn't notice their uniforms or the way they try their best not to hurt her, because people in her cell means that pain is forthcoming, and they've made the mistake of leaving her alone long enough for her to gather some energy to fight back with.

Even once she's exhausted, she can't stop screaming insults. It's only when she feels the first blissful wave of morphling in her veins, sees the sky and the hovercraft she's being lifted into, that she realizes: _This is the rescue. This is the happily ever after._

What a load of bullshit.


	4. i won't let us finish yet

Johanna is so sure that she's been hallucinating Inès's face onto the occasional passerby that when Inès does stop in front of her to say ,"Hi," it takes Johanna a minute to realize that her face is stubbornly refusing to fade into someone else's.

"Took you long enough," she says harshly, when she catches her breath again.

Inès smiles wryly. "You're kind of hard to miss."

Johanna is nervous and hopeful and _tired_ , so tired of fighting and breathing and living in a world that clearly has it out for her. "What do you want?" she says coldly. "Someone ask for an autograph? Or have people lost interest ever since I went bald?" 

Johanna wishes, fruitlessly, that Inès didn't know her so well, that there was some chance of being able to goad her into losing her temper. She wants to _fight_ , damn it. She's been angry at Inès for years. She wants to stay that way.

(She is _not ready_ for this.)

"I wanted to apologise," Inès says. "Will you let me apologise?"

And Johanna will never admit it, and Inès will never tell, but a sob escapes her lips and her hand tightens around the little bandage of pine needles she's taken to carrying around and she says, "Yes."


	5. now the sun is up and i'm going blind

They don't get a happy ending.

Johanna doesn't speak to her for a week after hearing her apology, and when she finally does, it's to corner her in her compartment, say "Take off your clothes," drive her crazy with need, and refuse to acknowledge her presence for another week.

They return to District 7 after the war. They fight over whether to return to Johanna's house in the Victor's Village or to Inès's old house near the forest. They fight over whether or not Johanna was right to vote for another Hunger Games. They break more than half their collection of crockery, fighting. They'd probably find a way to fight over sliced bread, if they could.

They don't know how not to be angry at each other anymore.

But the thing is, they don't know how not to be in love, either. 

Inès watches as Johanna chops more firewood than they'd need to weather five winters. Johanna watches as Inès carves some leftover chunks of ordinary wood into art. Johanna lets Inès hold her hand and doesn't complain at the long hours Inès spends tracing her callouses, because it never hurts. Inès lets Johanna kiss her and doesn't complain at the teeth sinking into her neck, because they never draw blood. Inès teaches Johanna to enjoy the rain again, because there's only so long you can refuse to shower before it becomes irritating. Johanna teaches Inès how to grieve, because there's only so long you can spend seeing the person you love as a monument to someone they didn't kill.

They don't get a happy ending. But they get a future together. 

It's more than they thought they could have. And somehow, it's enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Soundtrack:  
> Walls Could Talk - Halsey  
> Various Storms and Saints - Florence + the Machine  
> Deep End - A/T/O/S  
> Lie - Halsey  
> Delilah - Florence + the Machine
> 
> Story and chapters titled using lyrics from the above songs.
> 
> For whatever it's worth, Inès's last name is Favrette.


End file.
